As a vendor manager, an on-line abstractor, and a boots-on-the-ground abstractor (when I can actually get out of the office rather than giving the work to someone else!), my biggest piece is advice is this:  CONTROL YOUR CLIENT.  Do I have abstractors I consider incompetent?  Absolutely.  Sometimes, there are no choices out there.  But VERY close to 100% of the people I subcontract to are EXCELLENT.  To get that excellence, they have to limit the amount of work they can get done in a day.  If I'm dealing with my Upper Peninsula people, how can I expect them to travel literally hundreds of miles to get one search done -- in January -- when the roads are nothing but solid ice -- and it's still snowing.  And what kind of technology do you think is available in a county that has 6,502 people?  (Luce County, MI)  There is ONE abstractor -- for everyone -- that covers Luce (and bless her rugged heart!)  Her turn time is one week.  She goes once a week.  Period.  PERIOD.

Do you know how incensed some of the clients can BE about that?  It's insane.  I've dumped clients who think that harassing me will get their search back quicker.  Doesn't seem to matter that from the very beginning I tell them the average turn time in a particular midwest county.  They don't care when they sign up.

So, bottom line:  if you want quality, reliability and experience, be happy with a 2-3 day turn time.  Just WHY is it necessary to have everything turned around in hours?  Somebody tell me that, please, cuz I don't get it.  You want turn times that are 6 hours or less, you'll have to go with an on-line only searchers.